


Bigger (You're Pretty Small)

by koffkoffstyles (blametheone)



Series: Stucky One Shots [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Height difference, M/M, No Smut, Pre-Serum, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Size Difference, dONT TOUCH ME
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 15:46:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7112239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blametheone/pseuds/koffkoffstyles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is a lot shorter than his best friend, who never lets him forget it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bigger (You're Pretty Small)

**Author's Note:**

> [ okay so my best friend and i have the same height difference as bucky and steve did pre-serum, and i thought it would be cute to share my experience being the taller friend. although there are things that happen here that most definitely do not happen between us. so yeah. maybe i’ll con her into writing about being the healthy friend by the hospital bed all the time too lol xx ]

“Aw, hey! Look how small he is!”

They cackled and they laugh and they jeered, pinching Steve’s cheeks until they were crimson, hands poking and prodding like he was a stuffed toy. Bucky knew him, he was in his class. He looked two years younger than everyone else in their year, six instead of eight, smaller than the kids picking on him even though they were (to Bucky) clearly younger. 

Bucky frowned from his place, sitting atop the little rock with the flat top, book on his skinny knees.

“Hey!” he called out. “Stop!”                                         

Steve looked at him with these massive eyes, blinking and scared but underlying was gratefulness. The kids all picking on him took one look at Bucky — at least half a head taller than all of them, dark hair that fell over his eyes, lanky limbs exposed and arms crossed — and split. They ran without saying a word and Bucky didn’t know to be smug or ashamed that they were so easily scared of him.

Steve looked like he possessed a similar fear beside his relief. 

Neither of them said anything for a while, just stood there awkwardly before Bucky smirked.

“You are pretty small.”

 

**\------------------------------------**

 

“God, you’re going to break my neck, Rogers,” Bucky joked, grin splitting as he massaged the back of his own neck. “I think it’s constantly strained from looking down at you.”

Steve shot him a glare, rolling his eyes.

“Or because you don’t know how to stand up straight,” he snapped. “Slob.”

Bucky grinned and bent down to rest his arms on Steve’s thin shoulders (gently).

“Yeah, from looking down at you all the time!”

“Well, if it’s my fault why don’t you just stop looking at me?” Steve huffed. Bucky grinned.

“Can’t. Too pretty to stop lookin’ at.”

 

**\------------------------------------**

 

“Did you find it?” Steve asked as Bucky’s top half slid back out from under the bed, coughing, cobwebs in his hair. His arms were braced on the frame of the bed, knees bent like a mechanic rolling under a car, although he didn’t have a board to slide on — he barely fit under the bed as is, wriggling around to squeeze his chest underneath it.

Bucky thrust the object — some paper or something for school he had dropped there and forgotten he needed to give back — into the air like a victory. 

“If I need anyone to crawl under my bed again, remind me to just call you,” he coughed, shaking the dust from his hair. Steve scowled.

“Because-”

“Yes, Bucky, because I’m  _small_.”

 

**\------------------------------------**

 

“I’m smaller than most of your girls, Bucky, it’s embarrassing!” Steve pressed, hands on Bucky’s chest. They had just been lazing around on Steve’s bed, not even within touching range with Steve against the wall and propped up against the headboard and Bucky with his feet up on the windowsill, top half of his body nearly hanging off the other side of the bed.

Then the taller one had made a quip, a height joke, and Steve had pounced with a joking shriek, “Would you stop! It’s embarrassing!” which was responded to with a quiet, “It’s not embarrassing, Stevie, c’mon...” and now they were here.

“It is,” the blonde insisted. Bucky rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, but you’re better lookin’ than any of them,” he talked low and smooth. Steve’s jaw set. 

“Really? Now?”

“What?” Bucky shrugged. “I’m not trying anything, it’s just true.”

Steve scoffed. It wasn’t a self-confidence thing (well, it was) it was the fact that Bucky kept making flirting jokes and little comments like this, stuff he would usually spurt out to try and pull in a pretty dame. He kept saying things like that and Steve didn’t know how to feel and every damn time Bucky said something mildly flirtatious he got a pounding in his chest and ice in his stomach with the thought that maybe Bucky had found some of Steve’s more…  _personal_  drawings before he could throw them in the fire.

They had talked about it, a little, Steve confronting Bucky about being spoken to like he was a girl being swooned, to which the brunette had easily responded, _“Well, if you keep comparing yourself to them, I’m gonna be forced to treat you like one.”_

Now Bucky smirked. “Besides, you did it again. I told you, every time you call yourself small, I’m gonna treat you like a pretty girl.”

Steve’s lips pressed into a line.

“I’m not a pretty girl.”

“You sure?” Bucky teased, pushing at the blonde strands of his fringe. 

Steve’s jaw set, glare piercing. “Positive.”

Bucky tilted his chin in a taunt.

“Prove it.”

 

**\------------------------------------**

 

“That was better than a girl,” Bucky whispered, like he was talking to relieve the tension in the room. They were naked and sweaty, but the climatic highs had worn off and the dust had settled and Steve felt like he could cry with fear, his chest hurt with how tense he was and,  _God_ , Bucky was awful for his heart, nowadays.

“I don’t want to hear about your girls right now, Buck.”

There was silence, and when he spoke again Bucky’s voice was small.

“Hey, Steve?” a respondent grunt, “Just quick, real quick, about the girls?”

Another grunt.

“If, hypothetically, you were a pretty dame, um. Well, you’re, uh, the first one I’ve _brought home_.”

Steve’s heart stopped for a moment, picking up again so much lighter than before. He was Bucky’s first and Bucky was his first and if _that’s_ what Bucky chose to say right now then he was okay with this. Moreover, Steve had seen the girls that flirted with his best friend, and if he was Bucky’s first that had been a conscious decision on the larger boy’s part to wait, and a conscious decision to let Steve be that first person. The breath against the top of his head was a comfort, suddenly, not a dreaded reminder, and his hold was warm instead of scorching-

“And the smallest.”

And Steve fell to pieces in a fit of giggles against Bucky’s collarbones, the brunette joining in and they were naked and sweaty and laughing until they fell asleep.

 

**\------------------------------------**

 

“Steve, anyone would be tall next to you-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, Bucky-”

“You know why-”

“Yes, Buck, because I’m-”

“Because you’re so small!” he jeered, ruffling Steve’s hair with a shit eating grin and a childish giggle. Steve just rolled his eyes and let it happen, because-

“Yeah, yeah, alright Buck,” he pushed the hands off him. “We all know you only pick on my height so much to compensate for how small you are.”

Bucky scoffed. “What? I’m almost a foot taller than you!”

Oh, how he loved to exaggerate.

“I didn’t mean your height.”

It took a moment to sink in, Bucky’s footsteps slowing for just a moment as he processed not the joke but how offensive it was, spluttering indignantly and racing forward to pull his best friend into a headlock (a gentle one, though he’d never let Steve know that).

“That’s not true at all and you know it!” Bucky crowed, eliciting a proper belly laugh from his friend. 

“Oh, no, I know it’s true! You know me, Buck, I’m nothing if not honest!”

“That’s the biggest lie I ever heard!” he yelled, then said much quieter, “Just last week you told your Mama we were going to play some ball and  _where_  were we going?”

Steve paused for a moment, smirking. 

“Well, we technically played ball.”

And if there was ever anything that defined Steve's happiness, it was the beet red of Bucky's face just then.

 

\--

 

( [gif credit](http://fox-of-magic.tumblr.com/post/83754742370/steve-i-thought-you-were-dead-bucky-i-thought) )

**Author's Note:**

> [ leave me alone i'm not new to the fandom but i'm new to the fandom and i have this thing where i obsessively write short one shots when i join fandOMS DON'T JUDGE ME ]
> 
> twitter: koffkoffstyles  
> tumblr: softer-side-of-unbearable


End file.
